The Return of Navajo Boy

The Return of Navajo Boy, an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival and PBS, is an internationally acclaimed documentary that reunited a Navajo family and triggered a federal investigation into uranium contamination. It tells the story of Elsie Mae Begay, whose history in pictures reveals an incredible and ongoing struggle for environmental justice. A powerful new epilogue (produced in 2008) shows how the film and Groundswell Educational Films' outreach campaign create news and rally supporters including Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA). The Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform mandated a clean-up plan by the five agencies that are responsible for uranium contamination.

This film is a valuable resource for Native American and indigenous studies.

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Jeff

Groundswell Educational Films•1 year ago•Filmmaker

I met Navajos suddenly without any prior experience in Native America. I wanted to find the cast from an amateur movie made in the 1950s and titled Navajo Boy. My research took me to Monument Valley, Utah where I found a remarkable Navajo family history involving Hollywood, uranium mining and ...Read more

I met Navajos suddenly without any prior experience in Native America. I wanted to find the cast from an amateur movie made in the 1950s and titled Navajo Boy. My research took me to Monument Valley, Utah where I found a remarkable Navajo family history involving Hollywood, uranium mining and a missing baby.

The Cly family (rhymes with sky) accepted me and made me feel like I belonged there. We did not know where the documentary making process would lead us. I feel blessed because making this film helped the family solve a real mystery and make sense of a very complicated history. To reunite the family with a long lost baby brother named John Wayne Cly was incredibly lucky. But even more remarkable is the fact that the uranium contamination and health impacts which we put on the screen actually prompted a massive federal investigation. We ended the documentary with a cliff hanger. The scope of uranium contamination is vast. We made a 15 minute Epilogue to put a human face on it. I decided to focus on the family’s traditional house because they said it was made out of uranium. When the story of the Navajo uranium house made the news it attracted the attention of congress. So I kept on documenting what was happening. Keep in mind when you watch the Epilogue that it took the EPA a year to clean up the uranium house and then 11 more years to come back and clean up the area which we put on their radar in the first place. There are more than 520 abandoned mines in Navajo communities. The Return of Navajo Boy features one story, one family. And it is presented from the Navajo point of view. Through this Navajo lens we helped the tribe win the largest environmental settlement in history - a $1 billion dollar payout from the corporate polluter, Kerr-McGee which we singled out in our film. This one company left behind more than 50 uranium mines. You will see how we incorporated their own historic film to implicate them. The Return of Navajo Boy has stunned people all over the world. I am thrilled that this timeless story moves audiences and inspires students everywhere to reflect on Navajo culture, American history and the environment.

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